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https://twitter.com/GPriske/status/1072531119722192897ORIGINAL POSTwatch
Hey, my names Gabriel Priske. I've been working from home as a freelance game artist since I was 13 (now 23). Over the last ten years I've been building the skills I need to produce a full feature length game completely solo. This is that.
I've had this game idea stuck in my head for years now. A game where you wall jump to attack.
I can vividly envision this world where that mechanic creates beautiful dancing ninja combat. It's my dream project and it's called WAJU.
In 2016 I imagined a game where you wall jump up goliath enemies, damaging them with each jump! I set to work building a prototype in GameMaker Studio, despite having basically no programming knowledge.
After a shamefully long period of time, I made a rectangle that could wall jump off moving things. Feeling pretty discouraged with my lack of programming skill, I decided to tuck the project away. I saved it to a folder called WaJu (an abbreviation of Wall Jump), that would go unopened for almost a year.
In February of 2017 I was feeling anxious. While working from home as a game artist is the coolest job ever, I had been working for a year with the same client. My co-workers were great people, but projects they had me on where just not games I personally would want to play or make for that matter. The work left my tired, For awhile I even started to actively dislike making games, the one thing I have loved most since I was 12. I needed to remember why I love this game dev shit.
I bought the new GameMaker 2 engine and started on a prototype to mimic the original WaJu project. This time I focused on a more doable battle system. Instead of trying to climb giant enemies, I started playing with the idea of the player jumping off rockets in mid air.
This prototype was a big deal. It was really fun, both to develop and to play. It was, however, very messy. My passion for development re-ignited, I decided to take what I learned and start fresh.
I built a new project with organized files and commented code! I started to get a scope of what this mechanic would feel like in a broader game sense.
Then I started over... Again...
This newest iteration was particularly exciting because it wasn't broken. I kept the core bugs of previous version in mind as I built a new collision system from the ground up. The code was robust and accessible and the project was now objectively easy to work in.
In Apirl 2017 I posted this gif around.
I got a lot of great feedback and general excitement for the mechanic. This was the first time I got any real community feedback and it was exhilarating. I also had an extremely talented programmer reach out to me. I had worked with this guy professionally in the past, so I knew he was kick-ass. He wanted to help me build the now more capitally titled "WAJU" and an indie studio to support it!
In theory this was the dream. We both had years of experience as devs and two very different experiences running our own small businesses. We had the know how, the skill, and the project to build a stable indie studio.
Strangely, I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it. I had been through 4 iterations of this game on my own, crafting every inch of it solo. Working as a two man team would bring some big changes. The biggest of which was that I would no longer be programming. We would switch over to Unreal Engine 4, I would do art and he would do code. It weirdly made me feel like I was loosing something.
The opportunity was too good to pass up, so I agreed. I set to work modeling a character I had been designing a couple weeks prior.
That's as far as the UE4 version of WAJU got. My buddy ended up landing a crazy dream job at Blizzard. It was good news all around, he got an awesome job and I got my baby back.
The character design made more sense in 2D anyways. The holo/text message head was designed to clearly define the players 2D collision, without looking too cheap.
I was still working that same draining freelance job, so progress was slow, but I spent the next few months pushing through and devoting my free time to picking away at the project.
In October of 2017 I got some new freelance job opportunities that completely diverted my attention. I was able to leave the job that had been draining me and work on some well paid contracts in interesting new roles. The frenzy forced me to set WAJU down for awhile.
Every month that went by made it harder for me to open the project back up. I felt progressively more intimidated by the idea of reviving the momentum I had built up before stopping last. I just didn't know where to begin.
I spent some time creating really small solo projects like this little ball of rage quits that I call Beckon Forth.
I handed this project off to be finished by my best bud
https://twitter.com/wjhollyartThese projects left me feeling really unfulfilled though. While I enjoy those smaller games a lot, WAJU was always on my mind. I recently came to terms with that fact that the only thing stopping me from working on WAJU is me. I just needed to get the ball rolling again.
On July 14th, I tweeted this gif
The explosions are exactly what I needed to rejuvenate this projects energy. They are the feedback that was separating what I imagined WAJU being in my head from what people could see in my gifs and videos.
I plan to spend the next two months putting together a full functioning and arted out demo to pitch to publishers/funding outlets. I've already built the first draft of the level and am play-testing it with a few friends. These next eight weeks are going to be filled with a lot of hard work, but it's time for this dream to come true.
Read my blog about this stuff here -
www.gabesblog.comFollow me on twitter here -
https://twitter.com/GPriske
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